Aptissian
Phonology Vowels Consonants Phonotactics Aptissian phonotactics strongly favor syllables with few consonants.Syllables are of the type ©©(L/S)V©. Consonant clusters in the onset are mostly limited to combinations of voiceless fricatives and /t/ or /s/ and /p k/. All plosives can be followed by /r/. All consonants can be followed by a semivowel /j w/. Stress & Tone In Aptissian, stress is assigned according to the so called two-mora rule. The rule states that the stress falls onto the syllable which contains the second to last mora in a word. Stress is therefore dependent on syllable weight. Aptissian distinguishes light and heavy syllables, lasting one mora or two morae, respectively. A syllable is considered heavy if it contains any of these features: *A long vowel *A diphthong starting with a long vowel *A nasal in the coda *A part of a geminated consonant in the coda Since all syllables have at least one mora, stress can only fall on either the penultimate or ultimate syllable. If the penultimate is stressed, it receives a low tone. If the ultimate is stressed, it receives a high tone. There exists a class of words called "moraic clitics". These are monosyllabic words that can only appear attached to other words. Regardless of there syllable weight, they add a mora to the ending of a word without counting as a syllable of the word - therefore the stress will always fall on the syllable preceding the clitic and the tone will always be high. Orthography *Long vowels were traditionally marked with an apex - nowadays though, most people use the acute accent since most technologies do not support the apex sign *Diphthongs are written as the combination of their sounds - if, instead of a diphthong, a hiatus occurs, the Ι/Υ is marked with a trema if it is a short vowel or with an acute accent if it is a long vowel *If Ι/Υ could represent a /j/ or /w/, they do - the vowels have to be marked either by trema or by an acute accent *The phoneme /ŋ/ is written as ΓΓ/γγ *The phoneme /h/ is written as a spiritus asper above the following vowel (Examples: ἁ ἑ ἡ ἱ ὁ ὑ ὡ) Verbs General information Aptissian verbs are inflected for the following grammatical categories. *Person *Number *Clusivity *Formality *Tense *Aspect *Mood Additionally, there are multiple infinite verb forms (supine, infinitives, participles). Person Possible persons are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person which are used basically the same as in English. Additionally, Aptissian has a 4th person which is used in neutral speeach or when the subject is unknown. Number Aptissian has the singular, dual and plural number. However, the dual only has distinctive forms in the 1st person and otherwise uses the plural. The 4th person isn't conjugated for numbers at all. Clusivity Aptissian differentiates between inclusive and exclusive 1st person in the dual and plural numbers. Additionally, the plural has a third unmarked form. Formality The 2nd person in the singular and plural has a distinction between an informal and a formal form. Tense Aptissian has 6 tenses: 3 absolute tenses (past, present and future) and 3 relative tenses (relative past, relative present and relative future). The absolute tenses are used to describe when an event took place. The relative tenses are used to tell when a second event took place compared to the frst event. Aspect Aptissian differentiates between an imperfective (unfinished action) and a perfective (finished action) aspect. Mood Aptissian uses the indicative (for real actions) and the subjunctive (for unreal actions like wishes, conditionals etc.) mood. Conjugation Category:Languages